


Fish in the Sea DELETED SCENE

by phoarda



Series: FITS(YKHIF) [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, I'm Bad At Titles, cab ride, taxi driver!Jean, this is a deleted scene of sorts?? it was the end of PT2, which didn't feel like it fit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 10:37:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7529422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoarda/pseuds/phoarda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deleted scene from the end of Part 2B.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fish in the Sea DELETED SCENE

**Author's Note:**

> in case anyone's interested. i had a lot of ideas for the fic that didn't quiiiite fit. so here's one of them.
> 
> it's not edited or beta read or anything, but i feel weird leaving it out so here it isssssssssss

Jean only has one customer that day, but he doesn't know it'll be that way until he drops her off for good.

He picks her up from hotel circle, in front of a holiday inn. He checks the time to find he's ten minutes early, but it doesn't matter; she's already waiting by the curb.

"Wow," she says, falling heavily into the seat behind him, a backpack in her lap, "That was prompt."

Jean quirks a smile. The dispatcher called him a mere ten minutes ago, gave her an estimated time of 9:15, but here he is. "Lucky day, I guess. Where to?"

She's a woman in her late thirties, early forties at oldest, wearing a plain white blouse and a pair of jeans, no makeup. Short dreads frame her square face and dark, smooth skin. Wrinkles are in abundance around her eyes, giving her a weary, worried appearance, and the only thing she's got is that backpack, and for that reason, Jean's curiosity is piqued - after all, she's not like the (admittedly few) night-after's he's picked up, nor does she seem to be a tourist.

She directs him to a bank, one that's not but five minutes away. They go quiet after that. Jean likes to let others start a conversation, if they want to, but she keeps mum, and they don't exchange another word until Jean's pulled up by the door.

She pauses before getting out. "I have a few places I need to get to. Um, should I call up another cab, or can you...wait? I won't be long."

Jean waves her off. "It's fine. The meter keeps running though, so it's up to you."

"Okay. I'll be back soon."

Jean watches her climb out with her backpack and disappear after the glass doors. 

It's a sunny, pleasant Wednesday in Southern California, and Jean's content to just watch the clouds slowly go by while he waits. Admist all the chaos in his life lately, moments like these are small treasures.

As promised, she doesn't take long. A few minutes later and she's back, zipping closed her backpack with a distant expression. She offers him a tight smile and climbs in, then rattles off an address - North Park, most likey a house, if Jean remembers his streets right - and they're off. again.

"What's your name?"

Jean looks up at her in the rearview mirror, where she holds eye contact with him. "Jean," he says.

She nods simply. For once, Jean doesn't have to answer the often inevitable 'oh, are you french?' "Johanna," she introduces herself, and maybe it's the way she speaks, because Jean is very curious about her now.

"Chores?" he ventures to ask.

"I'm sorry?"

"Are you getting chores done?" he clarifies.

She hums. "Something like that, yes."

And she leaves it at that.

There's more to the story, Jean can tell, but he won't press. If it's meant to be, he'll find out in due time.

"You seem very young for a taxi driver," Johanna says after a little while.

It's not a new comment. "I suppose so."

"But you know your way around well." At his questioning glance, Johanna motions towards the front window. "Most people take the next exit."

Jean shrugs. "I used to live around here. Plus I've had some help getting to know how to get around."

The address is a house, just as Jean had predicted, and a nice one, too. Picket fence and green yard, the whole nine yards. He glances out towards it curiously, then looks back to find Johanna doing the same. 

"You still want me to wait?"

Johanna blinks and her gaze turns toward him. "Yeah, if it's not a problem. I shouldn't take long here either."

The door slams shut only halfway when she closes it; she has to open it and slam it again. Her steps towards the house are hesitant, and if Jean knew her better he might say she was intimidated.  
She rings the doorbell and waits.

Jean casts a look around the street. It's quiet and suburban, the streets unblemished save for a few oil stains, the sidewalks smooth and flat. Jean used to walk down this block occasionally when he was his kid, when he walked to the corner store, and he doesn't remember it like this. The houses are smaller and more pristine, now; Barking dogs have now been replaced by careful landscaping; what used to be a neighborhood now seems very manicured and superficial.

The door opens, catching Jean's attention. Johanna is led inside by someone he can't see, the soles of her dirty Chucks disappearing from sight.

Jean flicks on the radio for a bit. It's too quiet, and even though nothing on is even remotely interesting, it distracts him a little from the eerie place around him.

Johanna comes back not a second too soon, a stack of papers stapled together in her hand. From the doorway, an older woman watches her, her hair short and grey and her expression unreadable. 

"All good?" Jean asks.

Johanna nods, leaves her papers on the seat beside her, and begins rummaging in her dusty backpack. "Hold on, I've got the address written down here somewhere, if I can find it..."

She comes up with a scrap of paper which she passes forward. In blocky letters, the words ‘Cafe Calabria’ and the cross streets are written. Jean ends up using his GPS, since without an address, he's basically useless.

Johanna sits back with her papers and a pen. She's quiet even when starts up the car again: the only sounds he hears her make are the soft shifts of paper on paper, and a click of a pen.

While waiting at an intersection for the light to turn, Jean chances a glance back. Pen in hand, she flips through the massive blocks of text. Rental Agreement catches his eye, printed near the top.

He looks forward and the light is green. Behind him, paper rustled again, then falls quiet. Maybe Jean had too obvious in his curiosity, because Johanna clears her throat. "I'm moving out," she says. "Well, moving out and breaking up. I've got a lot of loose ends to tie."

She stuffs the papers in her backpack and switches them out for a flip phone, and as they near the destination, which hadn't been far from the last, she leans forward. "You can just drop me off over there," she says, pointing to the empty spot in front of the cafe.

"I can wait-"

"I'm meeting someone for lunch," Johanna says. "It'll be a while."

Jean does a quick parallel park, waiting while she rummages in her bag and brings out a wallet.

"Tell you what," he says, after she hands him a fare plus a generous tip, and he prints her a receipt, "I'm going to take my lunch break. You think you'll be done at...say, 1:20?"

Johanna nods. 

"I'll be back then."

Johanna climbs out, pausing before she closes the door. She has to stoop a little to look at him. "Thanks," she says.

Jean nods and she closes the door and heads for the cafe, her phone in one hand and the ratty backpack in the other.

+

Jean turns off the GPS and meets Eren at a halfway point between the lot and the cafe. Eren brings lunch, which is leftover fried rice from the day before.

Jean ends up with a few minutes to spare; he spends them in his car, reading one of the books Eren lent him and hating every word of it. He gets through ten pages when Johanna shows up.

He rolls his seat back to it's regular position and turns to face her when she slides in. 

She pauses for a second, her eyes trained on him.

"All good?" he asks, coaxing from her a grin.

"All good," she confirms. She hands him a clean napkin with an address written on it.

"Oh," Jean says, squinting down at the street name as he clips his seatbelt on, "I know where this is."

"You do?" Johanna says, sounding surprised. 

"Yeah, I think a friend of mine lived in one of the buildings on this block."

"Huh," she says. "Any idea if there's a grocery store nearby?"

Jean reaches for his keys and starts the engine. "Yeah, Murphy's is a couple of blocks over. You've never been around there, have you?"

"No," Johanna says. "But I'll be living there soon, so I better get used to it."

They arrive at a small apartment building not far from Jean's place, actually. It's a large complex, but the house she's looking for is apt #1. 

She steps out of the cab, looking dubiously up at the structure. It's shabby, not very well lit, and it stinks like a skunk sprayed the entire area.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Jean asks, feeling uneasy for her.

Johanna shakes her head firmly. "Nope, I'm good. Be right back," she says, closing the door, and with a firm grip on her bag strap, she starts up the steps. The papers are back in her hand, clutched tightly enough to wrinkle.

Jean drums his fingers on the steering wheel while he waits, craning his neck to look over at the building every so often. Her confidence is somewhat reassuring, infectious to a certain degree, but he's still sort of on edge.  
He's just about getting ready to go look for her (how long does 'be right back' even mean?) when she appears, looking triumphant.

"All good?"

She nods confidently. "I've got a new apartment now."

Jean looks back at the building. "Here?"

"At least it's mine," Johanna says, and the way she says it...Jean shuts up after that. "Next stop is in La Jolla."

They beat traffic, staying just ahead of rush hour. Jean thinks he's maybe overstepped, until she asks him a question. "So what's your story?"

"Sorry?"

"What's your story? Why are you taxi driving, are you in school?"

Jean looks back at her, but her gaze is trained out the window, watching a plane depart as they pass the airport.

"I don't really have much of a story-" Jean starts to say.

"Well, you kind of know mine, so I don't care if yours is boring, I wanna hear it."

Jean pauses. He changes from one lane to another, rolling the question on his tongue - his story? What is his story? - and considering what it means.

There's something automatic about the way it undoubtedly involves Eren.

"Taxi driving was more of a job thing," Jean says. "I knew someone who would hire me and I needed to be making some money. School-"

He breaks off.

"School?" Johanna asks.

"Law school and hating it," is what Jean says. "Law school and about to drop out" is what he doesn't say, but it's on the tip of his tongue.

"That's it?"

"That's it."

Johanna's face says she doesn't buy it. Her mouth says nothing, though, and luckily, that line of questioning stops there.

Jean rolls his windor down. The closer they get to the ocean, the cooler it gets, and as they start making their way down to sea level, the ocean is visible, a shimmering blue, almost indistinguishable from the sky.

"Where are we going?" 

"I need to pack my shit," Johanna says. "He has work until 8 or so, that's why I'm doing it now."

She leads him down the hill, into some small streets and then around a cul-de-sac, finally having him park in an empty driveway.

"What's the time?" Johanna asks, climbing out. Jean squints at his dashboard, hard to see with the reflected sun.

"It's three ten," he says.

"Okay." She shuts the door. A keychain jingles in her grip. "I'll be back in ten minutes, tops."

"Okay." She shuts the door. A keychain jingles in her grip. "I'll be back in ten minutes, tops."

There's not much to see in the area surrounding the house, or the house itself. It's nice, Jean supposes. Plain, with a piddly garden. Curtains block any chance of being able to look in through the windows, and she's closed the screen door - it's too dark to see through the narrow grating of that, either.

Johanna comes back with a duffel bag, which Jean takes from her and helps to stuff in the trunk. She goes back inside and is gone for a little longer, comes out with two boxes that she nearly drops. Jean comes over to help, but she refuses.

It's when she comes out with another two boxes that things start to go down.

"Son of a bitch," she mutters, shoving the last one in and slamming shut the trunk. Jean follows her dark gaze over to a truck making it's way down the street towards them. "God fucking dammit."

Jean's skin is tingling, his ears and brain growing increasingly more and more alert with every time she curses. He's quick to react when she motions for him to get back in, and behind him, he hears her do the same, then fumble with the seat belt.  
Quick glances behind them as Jean starts up the car - "Get back on the freeway, we're headed downtown," - reveal that the person driving the truck is large, but not much else, seeing as only their looming silhouette can be seen from where they are. 

Jean backs out of the driveway as quickly as he can without scraping against the sidewalk, and for a split second, it looks like the truck might not let them pass, might veer right behind them at the last minute.

And then it doesn't. Jean switches from reverse to first gear, and it's fine, and nothing's in his way, and then they're gone, leaving the enormous red truck behind them on the nearly-empty street.

Jean doesn't relax until they're a few blocks away. He finally chances a glance back, making sure no truck comes up behind them, and then he looks at Johanna, and she's shaking. Her hands are shaking, her eyes are wide, shoulders and legs twitching uncontrollably, eyes so wide and her face so starkly shocked that it seems like she's not even breathing.

Jean exhales a shallow breath, shifting against his seat. He flicks his eyes up, again, to Johanna. "All good?"

He stops briefly at a stop sign, then joins onto the main road. A squirrel scampers away from the street into some bushes.

Johanna looks up, meets his eyes with that same shaken stare. She holds eye contact briefly, then drops her shoulders and closes her eyes, pressing her hands tightly against her cheeks.

"Yeah." She sighs shakily. "Yeah, all good."

Jean doesn't ask about whether she's telling the truth. 

He doesn't ask if that was her ex or not. He doesn't ask her reasons for leaving him, doesn't ask about her terrified reaction. He doesn't ask if she's left because he's heavy-handed or sharp-tongued or something worse. 

He doesn't ask, because he doesn't really need to, not when it's clear in her glittering eyes.

"Well," Jean says, after a while. "Congratulations, man."

Johanna drops her hands and sets them on her knees, and though she's obviously still shaken up, her expression turns kind of thoughtful. Her brow furrows, and not in a frustrated way.  
Jean notices, for the first time, a patch of skin on her temple, just a shade lighter than her skin.

He wonders if the reason she's leaving has to do with whatever she's covered up.

(But he doesn't ask, and doesn't really need to.)

"Thanks."

She gives him the next address, or at least, an approximation of it, seeing as she can't remember the number or exact street name. Still in La Jolla, but on the other side, closer to where the beach is.

Johanna climbs out of the car before Jean's even turned off the negine. "Back in a bit," she says, before Jean can even ask where they are. She gives a small wave without looking at him, trudges over to the door, rings the bell, and stands to wait.

In all the times Jean's seen her enter a building, she has not once looked back. It's very striking. It's her resolve, manifested into a pointed gesture; or maybe it's just her confidence.

A woman opens the door. She's taller, by just a little bit, and she's very decorated, from the little that Jean can see: her shirt is made of shimmering fabric, and from her ears hang sizable earrings, polished silver.

(He's trying not to look, but he's very intrigued by the whole thing, and it's hard not to when he can almost hear what they're saying.)

Neither of the women make any move to go inside. Johanna stands with her feet firmly planted on the welcome mat, and the new woman stands in the doorway, her stiff posture and crossed arms anything but welcoming. 

Johanna speaks first.

After some time, the woman responds, and unlike Johanna's deep voice, hers carries, enough for Jean's ears to catch small snippets, fractures of words. It's obvious she's upset, and that they're arguing.

"I don't...overreacting! Can't believe..."

Johanna stands still as the woman talks, her arms waving with emphasis. Jean can't see Johannas face from where he is, but the other lady's expressions speak a lot.

There's something familiar about this situation, about the way Johanna stands still and silent while the woman shakes her head and speaks loudly. It's reminiscent of the time Jean overheard his mother lose her closest friend when she told her she was leaving Dad to be with Mariana.

It's the same appalled tone, and the same shocked reaction. The same hard set of his mother's shoulders. 

And after a while of enduring the woman's ranting speech, Johanna does exactly what Maman did: she turns around and walks away.

Jean turns his eyes away as she walks towards the car, keeping them firmly on the window in front of him when she climbs in, and he says nothing when she asks him to take her back to the apartment building.

He doesn't look when he hears her wet sniffle. Wordlessly, he passes a tissue, which she takes, after a pause.

"Thanks," she says, voice gravelly.

And when Jean does eventually glance back, her eyes are dry, her expression is calm, and her hands are laced together with steely resolve.

There's a light about this woman. A sort of shining brightness that instills hope in Jean, and it's true that she does remind him very much of his mother, but there's something else, too, something that is a little like Eren.  
It's a little silly, but Jean does feel proud of her. In the few hours he's known her since he first drove up to the Holiday Hotel, she's been nothing short of admirable and level-headed and strong.

"It's funny," Johanna remarks, "The people that I once considered to be good friends turn out to be shit, but I'm actually more relieved than anything else."

Jean considers her frown in the mirror, debating whether or not she's expecting him to respond. "Sometimes it takes a shitstorm to find out who's really willing to share their umbrella," he says, prompting a tiny grin. "Most people aren't willing to be in it for the long haul, but we trust them anyway. A lot of times they fall through, but sometimes you'll find those worth sticking around for."

Johanna's quiet for a little while, long enough that Jean starts to wonder if he's said something out of line.

"You know what?" she says. "Take the next exit here."

She unzips her backpack and fishes out her phone. Jean hears the clicking of the keys, a number being dialed, and then, barely, the sound of the phone ringing.

"Hey."

Jean does his best to pretend he's not listening.

"I'm sorry I didn't call you," Johanna says. "Shauna loaned me some money for a hotel room. I went to get my stuff today, and Elaine managed to get me that apartment."

A pause.

"Me too," Johanna says, and her voice cracks. She clears her throat. "Are you home right now? Okay, are mom and dad around?"

Another pause.

"Okay. Okay, good. I'll be there soon, okay, and we'll talk."

She closes the phone with a cheap-sounding clap.

"Y'know, for someone who says they don't have a story, you sure of a hell have a lot more integrity that a lot of assholes I know."

Jean grins a little at that, and Johanna returns with a small smile, a real one this time, showing off the gap between her two front teeth.

+

Their last destination ends up being a taco shop.

Well, not really. It's the building next to it, a small house tucked in between the restaurant and another house. It's on a fairly busy street a neighborhood over from the one Johanna's new apartment resides in.  
It's a cute house, with a small little yard and a little gate, maybe two feet high. In the grass, two kids tumble around, each trying to wrestle a football from each other. They look up when they hear the cab pull up, pausing their tussle to squint and try to see who's inside.

Jean doesn't ask if he needs to wait for her, beacuse she's already rifling through her backpack again. She takes out a small pouch, which she snaps open and reaches inside to take out a small wad of money.

She separates it and hands him a large pile of bills. After Jean counts it, he shakes his head. There's a 30% tip. "I can't take this," he says. It's too much."

Johanna shakes her head. "Don't worry about it."

"No, really."

Johanna scoots across until she's on the side facing the sidewalk, then opens the door. "If it makes you feel any better, I got it from someone who doesn't deserve or need it," she says, lips curling.

Jean hesitates, but she's already climbing out. He leans over, shoves away the fare. Opens his door and pops the trunk for the waiting Johanna, then helps her heave her boxes onto the sidewalk and shoulder her bags.

"Good luck, Johanna." 

"Thanks."

The trunk is slammed shut. Johanna steps over to the little gate and pushes it open, and the little kids - twins, it looks like - scramble to beat each other to hug her first. She takes them in with a huge smile, nearly toppling off balance, and they follow her up the steps to the door. Joanna opens the screen door, lets them in first, and in the doorway appears a young woman, obviously her sister, judging by the way her facial features - eyebrows, nose, teeth - are so alike.

Johanna is met with an enormous hug and immediately pulled inside. The screen door swings shut by itself.

**Author's Note:**

> writing is hard


End file.
